MURPHY, Richard. Sailing to an Island (First edition)

London: Faber and Faber, 1963. First edition. 8vo. pp. 63. Original green cloth, lettered in gilt to spine, in the original pictorial dust jacket. A very good copy, the text clean and bright; dust jacket well preserved with light wear to extremities.

Richard Murphy’s first major collection of poetry, a work that firmly established him among the important voices of modern Irish poetry. The poems draw deeply on the landscape and maritime culture of the west of Ireland, particularly Connemara and the Aran Islands, with subjects ranging from island life and seafaring traditions to local history and folklore. Notable poems include The Last Galway Hooker and The Cleggan Disaster, the latter reflecting on the tragic 1927 drowning of fishermen from Connemara.

Murphy (1927–2018) became widely recognised for his ability to fuse historical narrative, personal reflection, and the physical landscape of Ireland’s western seaboard. The poems in this early collection reveal many of the themes that would define his later work: the sea, exile, memory, and the fragile relationship between people and place.

Published by Faber and Faber, this volume helped launch Murphy’s literary career and remains one of the key early books in the canon of twentieth-century Irish poetry.

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